To my family in China and my wife Yun ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank Prof. Robert Dickinson for advising my thesis and providing support for my PhD study for the past five years. This dissertation would be impossible without his continuous encouragement and support. I am grateful to the support and help from and discussions with Prof. Albany). I also like to thank my current and past group me...

A new nonparametric method to correct model data is proposed. At any given point in space and time the correction is determined from “analogs” in a learning dataset. The learning dataset contains model data and simultaneous observations. The method is applied to the significant wave height dataset of the 45-yr European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Re-Analysis (ERA-40). Comparison o...

We document a divergence in the duration of rule for monarchs in Western Europe and the Islamic world beginning in the medieval period. While leadership tenures in the two regions were similar in the 8th century, Christian kings became increasingly long lived compared to Muslim sultans. We argue that forms of executive constraint that emerged under feudal institutions in Western Europe were ass...